Penglai
by Ninmub
Summary: Kurogane, a poor farmer, finds a mysterious, injured stranger in the forest. KUROFAI.
1. Part One

**Title:** Penglai

**Pairing: **KuroFai

**Warnings:** violence, gore, shounen-ai, some sexual themes

**Words:** 20 500 – it's split into two parts to make uploading easier, but it's supposed to be read as a whole.

**Summary:** Kurogane the Twelfth Century Bamboo Cutter finds a Shiny Stranger with Magical Powers!! Or something.

**Notes:** OK, so this one is for chaotic_cupcake, 'cause she screwed my head around with comparative mythology the other day and it's ALL HER FAULT. It's based loosely (VERY loosely) on the Japanese myths concerning celestial maidens, including the tenth-century narrative known as the _Tale of the Old Bamboo Cutter_. I changed several things around in my adaptation, obviously.

Also, this is supposed to be set during the early-to-mid Heian Era – think twelfth century or so. The title, "Penglai", is a mystical island mentioned in the _Old Bamboo Cutter_, and I basically only chose it because it was a cool-sounding name for an Otherworldly kind of place. _Also_ also, while this pretends to be vaguely historically plausible, I did take considerable liberties with naming and etiquette – for instance, 'Syaoran' obviously isn't a Japanese name, but I couldn't think of a way of giving him a different name and still making it clear that he was, in fact, Syaoran. So, just…suspension of disbelief, yes?

* * *

One night, there was a rain of stars. The people on earth looked up and marvelled, or ran away and prayed, or slept on in oblivion. The next day, the world carried on as it always had – at least down below. Up above, things were in a very sorry state of affairs indeed. Something rather unpleasant had happened, and all the people in the City of the Moon were feeling nothing short of miserable. It was no one's fault, and once it had begun no one could have stopped it; but whether or not it could have been avoided entirely was a question that even the wisest of the gods will never be able to answer. Love has always made a point of being incomprehensible.

* * *

It was autumn, and the flooded streams rushed loud and white beneath the willows. Alone in the early morning, a man trudged along the muddy bank where pinks and lilies of the valley grew, his breath billowing out in front of him in the cold. He was tall and young, and very poor, for he was only a simple bamboo-cutter, and had no other income at all. He lived on the fringes of the forest with only his small brother to look after, and kept the sword that their father had carried stowed safe in the rafters of their hovel. He owned very little apart froma blazing temper and a great, proud heart (neither of which currencies has ever made a man rich, materially or otherwise). His name was Kurogane.

His path soon brought him to the source of the stream, where a cataract sprung from an aperture high above and foamed down over a tumble of mossy boulders before spilling into a wide, shallow pool. On the opposite bank there grew a tall thicket of bamboo. Catching sight of this,he shouldered his kama and waded out into the pond. The water was very cold, and deep enough to soak through his trousers and down inside his boots. He cursed, but bit back his shivers, thinking only of the grain that this harvest would fetch in the small prefecture nearby, and if it would be enough to feed his brother, and whether or not there would be any left over that they might put aside for the long winter.

But when he was halfway across the pool, he stopped dead in his tracks: for the water that foamed about his feet was dark, and the grasses that grew on the bank were stained red with blood.

He hesitated only a moment, and then moved forward carefully. He was fairly certain that whatever it was must already be dead, or else it would certainly have smelt him coming, but he had often seen men gutted by boars that had seemed completely incapacitated, and so he was cautious. Pushing the tall shoots aside with great precision, he raised his kama just in case, and peered in.

The next second, he began to hack away at the bamboo as quickly as he could, swearing. He caught the stalks as they fell, laying them to one side on the bank and making sure that they would not wash away, for whatever else followed, he would need them later, probably to negotiate the hire of a surgeon. He had not seen so much blood since his mother had been killed. With something of a passage cleared, he shoved his way through the thicket, ignoring the slap of leaves against his face, and knelt down next to the wounded man.

He was thin, skeletally so, and his naked skin shone so white in the gloom that Kurogane was almost afraid for a moment that he might be a spirit, some monstrous, beautiful creature made all of mist and water. But the thick mess of gore all down his face and chest was vividly human, as was the sweat slicking down his colourless hair. Kurogane laid one hand on the man's shoulder, and felt him cold and shivering. The man flinched and cried out a little, his single remaining eye flickering, but did not wake. The blood on his face was cracked black at the edges and mixed with hardening mud: he must have been out here for some time already.

Kurogane was close and suspicious by nature, but beneath that he was a good, generous man, brave and direct, and above all disdainful of anyone who did not do his duty. This lying here before him was duty. Tangled in the slime at the base of the bamboo nearby lay an old robe that he assumed was the man's, and although it was filthy, it was reasonably dry, and seemed very warm. Kurogane raised the man up carefully and wrapped the cloak about his shoulders, taking care not to injure him further. Then he lifted him up into his arms and stood.

'Wait,' whispered the man.

Kurogane waited.

But the man said no more. He coughed wet and red onto Kurogane's shoulder, and then slumped. Kurogane shook him, just a little, to make sure that he was not dead, for his breathing was worrying light, and his strange smooth skin, pale as a noble lady's, was colder than winter; but he shifted in Kurogane's arms once more with a small cry of pain. Kurogane, satisfied, bent his face down low over the man's to keep any stray leaves from brushing the wound, and carried him out from the darkness and into the world.

His hair shone golden in the light of the rising sun.

* * *

The wound was cleaned and cauterised in exchange for one of their mother's lacquered hairpins, which Kurogane had been hoarding diligently against emergency for over seven years. They must have been more valuable than he had thought, because he was also supplied with a salve that would keep out infection, along with a good deal of advice.

'The boy should do it,' the surgeon had said: 'He's got smaller hands.'

So Syaoran was shown how to clean the wound without doing further damage, and how to grind up the little block of medicine and mix it with clean water, and how to prepare a tea that would help with pain. He frowned anxiously and nodded like a simpleton, but then recited back his instructions perfectly with barely any hesitation. The surgeon, a mean, jealous man, looked rather displeased. Kurogane sat crouched in the corner with one hand on the stranger's pulse and watched Syaoran with a strange mixture of pride and regret.

Then the surgeon had said, 'So, tell me, friend, why are you helping this foreigner? Is he rich?'

Kurogane, not bothering to move from his spot in the corner, had said, 'Thank you for your time. Now get out of my house.'

It was more than three days before the stranger woke up. When he did, he smiled.

'You should say where you are,' Kurogane said, cracking open one eye.

The stranger sat up anyway. His thin arms shook slightly as he pushed himself up, and his breath came in short, painful gasps. He felt his face, the tendons in his neck cording as he touched the thick layer of bandages over his eye; then he stretched, carefully, deliberately, and looked around himself. It was still raining outside, but the worst of the storm had passed, and a little moonlight was beginning to filter through the clouds. It flooded the little room with silver, throwing into sharp relief the bare floor, the old cedar-wood chest, the boy curled up asleep in one corner, the stern man sitting straight-backed in another.

'Oh!' said the stranger, and smiled, and bowed his head. 'Hello, there! You are my esteemed host, I presume?'

'Lie down,' was Kurogane's answer.

The stranger's smile only widened. 'I can't just laze around all the time,' he said. 'I feel like stretching my legs a bit. I wonder, could you tell me where I am?'

'You're at the edge of the forest. There's a village nearby, but you're not going anywhere now.'

The man chuckled delightedly. 'You're a bossy one, aren't you?' he said. 'Ah – could you tell me _how_ I came to be here?'

'I found you. Up in the foothills, by the river. Three, four days ago now.'

'Hmm. I'm afraid I don't remember that.' The stranger stretched again, running a hand through his lank pale hair. He was trying very hard to appear nonchalant, but Kurogane caught the way his hands trembled and his breath hitched. Nearly the whole right side of his face had been torn away, and the long, deep gashes down his chest suggested that he had been mauled by some kind of beast: it would take a long time before he healed fully.

'Look, you want to get yourself killed, that's none of my business,' Kurogane said, getting to his feet. 'But just know that you'll have wasted my time. Lie back down and don't move. I'm going to get you some water.'

The man looked up at him with an expression of mild surprise, and then grinned again. 'Yes, sir!' he said, and did as he was told. 'You know, for someone who saved my life, you're pretty scary.'

'Don't talk, either,' said Kurogane, and strode outside.

He filled a wide bamboo bowl with rainwater from the barrel outside, one arm held over his head to keep off the lessening drizzle. It was late, but not yet close to day, and the moon shone bright above him. Ducking back into the shelter of the little house, he stood a moment and looked down at the stranger in the moonlight. He lay bare to the waist, seeming not to feel the cold, and smiled like an idiot when his single remaining eye met Kurogane's; but Kurogane saw only how thin he was, and how shrunken and brittle he looked.

He knelt down at the man's side and pulled the blankets up to his chin, ignoring him when he tried to protest. He slipped one hand under his head and raised him up a little so that he could sip at the water little by little, saying, 'Look, having a dead body lying around is only going to annoy me.'

'You're a very caring man,' the stranger whispered, licking his lips. 'If – if you don't mind, I'm – hungry.'

'You haven't eaten for a while,' Kurogane cautioned him. 'Don't overdo it. Drink this first.'

The stranger did as he was told. When the water was finished, he gave a small, tired sigh and turned his face away, the bandages scratching Kurogane's palm. 'I would very much like to know your name,' he said, very softly – so softly, in fact, that Kurogane only knew he was speaking by the motion of lips against his wrist, and had to bend down close to catch the words. 'I've never even heard it before.'

'It's Kurogane. Stop talking.'

The stranger pulled a face. 'What an awful name,' he whispered, and gave a small breath of laughter.

Kurogane's skin prickled. 'Nothing wrong with it,' he snapped. 'I thought I told you to stop talking.'

'It's awful,' the stranger insisted. He brought up one hand and laid his fingers on Kurogane's wrist, but they had barely more weight than his words. 'My name is Fai.' He yawned. 'Nice and short, see?'

'You're raving.'

But the man called Fai did not hear him. His fingers relaxed and slid away from Kurogane's hand; his smile disappeared. His face in sleep looked much older, for though it was unlined and smooth as a child's, the cheeks were sunken, and something about the set of the mouth suggested that it had frowned a great deal over the years. Kurogane stayed by his side a long while, just in case he stopped breathing. Eventually, he lowered Fai's head back down onto the floor and padded back to his usual sleeping place in the corner. He drew his blanket around his shoulders and leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes and slept.

He dreamed of moonlight.

* * *

He set out early the next morning. Syaoran was just getting up as he left, and so he said to him, 'That one will probably wake up today,' and then, 'Use the sword if he's any trouble.'

'I don't think that will be necessary,' Syaoran said, yawning.

'He's annoying,' Kurogane explained shortly. In a rare moment of something approaching tenderness, he added, 'Hey – look after yourself.'

Syaoran's sleepy face lit up, and he bowed. 'Thank you, onii-san,' he said. 'Please work hard today.'

Kurogane very nearly smiled. He laid his hand on Syaoran's head for a brief instant, and then left.

The bamboo had grown well in the rainy weather, and he was able to harvest a respectable number of good, tall canes. He took them into the prefecture nearby, where one of the servants of the samurai lord who held sway over the area accepted them in exchange for a few small jade trinkets. These he traded in the village for soba and a small portion of rice before setting off for home. The walk was long, and he was tired, so he did not reach the edge of the forest before late afternoon. The sun shone golden on the dripping gingko leaves, and turned the dark wet thatch of the hovel to flame. Kurogane stopped to check that the rain had not damaged the vegetable patch, grabbed one of the goats just before it managed to chew its way out of its pen, and went inside.

The screens had been pushed back so that the warmth from the fire could spread all through the house, and the effect was strangely cheering, even homelike. Kurogane had never thought he would associate this place with home. 'Welcome back, oniisan,' Syaoran said from the fireplace; and, 'Welcome back, my friend!' sang Fai, who was sitting propped up against the wall and sipping at a bowl of what was probably vegetable soup.

'You alright?' Kurogane said to Syaoran, eyeing Fai a little suspiciously.

Syaoran nodded, and got up to take the food from Kurogane. 'Thank you very much, onii-san,' he said. 'I caught some fish in the river today, so we'll have those too. I'll get started on the meal right away.'

'Your brother is very industrious,' Fai said. He was wrapped up in some old clothes of Kurogane's, which, in addition to being far too big, were a little too ostentatiously well-made; they belonged to another time. 'He has looked after me wonderfully.'

Kurogane made a non-committal noise, and watched as Syaoran, who had pretended not to hear the compliment, blushed and busied himself with the pots. A boy so clever and hardworking shouldn't have to live in a hovel doing women's chores all day. But he was dutiful to the last, and never complained or gave any sign that he might be discontented with his life. Kurogane shook the bitterness away: nothing ever came of regret. He sat down on the floor and rubbed his work-weary feet, and clicked his neck.

Fai put down his bowl and waited quietly until Kurogane seemed comfortable, and then said, 'I don't think I have thanked you yet.'

Kurogane fairly bristled. 'Don't bother me,' he said. 'I'm tired.'

Fai looked a little taken aback, but the expression soon gave way to his customary smile. 'I'll just have to keep very quiet, then,' he said. 'Don't worry! I'll be so quiet you won't even know I'm here. You'll be amazed at how quiet I can be.'

'You'll be quiet when you're dead,' Kurogane muttered.

Fai laughed. 'My, but you're grumpy.'

Kurogane glowered at him, and, under the pretext of doing so, gave him a cursory once-over. His face already looked a little rounder, even under the heavy bandages, and he was no longer shivering as badly as he had the night before. His fingers were still painfully thin and shone white as bone where he gripped the soup-bowl, but the colour of hair in the heavy amber light of sunset was like nothing Kurogane had ever seen, nothing that could be real. He thought _fox_ and then _ghost_ and then _spider_; he looked again at the pale sharp-knuckled hands, and remembered the blood, and thought _man_. He frowned.

'If I'm grumpy, it's because of you,' he announced, loudly, to cover his confusion. He heard Syaoran cover a snicker, and added, 'And because I'm hungry.'

'Oh - sorry for the wait!' Syaoran called, immediately, and scampered outside to fetch some more water.

There followed a little silence in which only the crackling of the fire could be heard. Kurogane scratched his head and stretched some more, and then lapsed into a stillness from which he watched Fai intently, if furtively. Even wounded, his movements were both graceful and powerful, and he seemed accustomed to pain, yet his fragility was undeniable. He seemed to be fashioned entirely of air and light, so fleeting a construct that he might dissolve away at any moment. He was no more substantial than a shape glimpsed once in a swirling cloud of dust in the sunlight.

But when he reached out suddenly and laid his hand on Kurogane's arm, smiling, his touch was solid and warm and real.

'My friend,' he said, 'I don't want to be a burden. You and your brother have been very kind to me, and if you are going to continue this kindness, I must provide you with some sort of recompense.'

Kurogane shook his head. 'I told you not to bother me.'

'I can pay you. Please let me.'

'Back then – you had nothing with you.'

'I know,' Fai said: 'I left everything behind, and I don't regret it at all. But I can still help you – pay you, I mean. I can pay you.'

'We don't need help,' Kurogane said, very clearly and stiffly, forgetting the strangeness of the first half of the statement in his resentment at the second. 'I'm not interested.'

Fai looked genuinely hurt, and his gaze dropped. The next moment, however, he was smiling as brightly as ever, and saying, teasingly, 'You're grumpy _and_ stubborn _and _your name is too long. We're really going to have to work on that, you know.'

Kurogane was about to snap, but Syaoran came back before he could. Fai removed his hand instantly, as though he had been caught doing something wrong, and struck up a cheerful conversation with Syaoran about the care of goats. Kurogane lay down on the tatami with his arms hooked underneath his head and closed his eyes. When he did not understand something, he grew irritable; and at the moment, he was very irritable indeed.

In the end, they shared a pleasant meal. Syaoran had been starved of company for a while, and enjoyed talking with Fai, who seemed to have travelled in foreign parts a great deal: he shared stories of the mainland, and told miraculous tales of dragons and oni and foxes. Kurogane turned up his nose at them a little, mostly because they were embarrassingly similar to all the old fairytales he had been cataloguing mentally all evening. The sun left the house and twilight took its place. Syaoran began to yawn, as did Fai. Kurogane picked up their bowls and said, 'Both of you, go to sleep.'

'Ah! What about a drink?' Fai asked. 'Do you have any sake?'

'You are not drinking under my roof,' Kurogane said, very firmly. 'Don't argue.'

'So that means you do have some!'

'If I do, you're not getting any.'

'You're hoarding it all for yourself, aren't you?' Fai accused him. 'You're grumpy and stubborn and your name is too long _and_ you're selfish. That's very disappointing behaviour, you know.'

'I told you to shut up!' Kurogane barked, glancing at Syaoran to make sure he wasn't laughing. The last thing he needed was for his brother to stop respecting him. 'You're injured. Start acting like it.'

It was only after Syaoran had doused the fire and curled up in his corner, and Kurogane had shifted the screens back into position and taken up his customary position as guardian in _his_ corner, that Fai whispered, 'Kuro – Kurogane?'

'I'm asleep,' Kurogane said, without opening his eyes.

'Not even someone as scary as you can sleep sitting up.'

'I can.'

'Well, then I'll just have to talk to you while you're sleeping! You don't mind, do you? You'll hear me in your dreams! Won't that be fun?'

Kurogane groaned and let his head slump back against the wall. 'What do you want?' he asked, and braced himself for lunacy.

'Where you found me, back then – do you remember where it was? Could you get there again, if you needed to?'

'Probably.' He shrugged, keeping his eyes resolutely closed. 'What, did you lose something there?'

'No, just – well, sort of. If you get a chance, go back there tomorrow, would you? Just to have a look around.'

'One hassle after another. You really are annoying, you know that? Go get it yourself.'

Fai laughed. 'You're the big bad oni who kidnapped me and won't let me out of your sight.'

'Keep talking like that and I'll kill you.'

* * *

'These clothes are beautiful,' Fai said to Syaoran after Kurogane had said off the next morning. 'Why don't you wear them more often?' Catching sight of the boy's face, he added, hastily, 'Ah, forgive me – I haven't been down here very long, and I still don't really understand your customs – I'm sorry if I offended you –'

'No, no, it's not that,' said Syaoran: 'They're just – from a long time ago, that's all. We keep them in case there's a bad winter, in case we need to sell them for something.'

After a long pause, Fai said, delicately, 'You and that big bad brother of yours – have you lived here long?'

Syaoran said, 'A while,' and then, 'He doesn't like talking about it. I don't mind.'

Fai looked again at the boy's brave, cheerful face, and changed the subject.

* * *

Kurogane found the place again easily enough. The bamboo had grown back just as thick as it had been, and there was no trace at all of what had happened there, but he knew it all the same. He scoured the area thoroughly, but could find nothing. It was not until he had all but given it up as a bad job that he happened to look down and see, nestled among the flat shifting stones, something that shone.

That night, just like the night before, he spoke to Fai after dark, when Syaoran was sleeping. This time, however, the conversation was different.

Kurogane said, 'I found what you lost.'

And Fai said, 'Did you, now? How clever of you! I hope you'll accept it as payment for being so kind to me.'

Then there was a long silence. Kurogane could imagine Fai smiling. He scowled at the image. 'You lost all that, huh?' he said, eventually. 'That's strange, considering you had nothing with you at all.'

'I had nothing because I lost everything,' Fai explained, reasonably. 'Silly.'

Kurogane had to resist thumping his fist against the floor. 'That's not what I mean,' he snapped. 'You were naked, you were nearly dead. You couldn't –' He subsided. He knew what he meant, and Fai knew what he meant. 'Forget it, then.'

'If you go back, you'll probably find a lot more,' Fai said.

True anger flared up in Kurogane for the first time then. He breathed in slowly through his nose and pursed his lips, feeling himself start to shake. 'I'm not like that,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Don't think you can buy my favour.'

'That wasn't my –'

'Keep your gold to yourself,' Kurogane said, and left the room.

Alone in the moonlight, Fai bent over double and bit his fist until it bled.

* * *

Winter came on fast. It was fairly mild, and did not rain overmuch, though often at night there came a dry cold that was enough to slice the lungs like a sword. The three men who lived in the small house at the edge of the forest had just enough to keep themselves adequately fed, for while they were never quite free of hunger, they never quite starved, either. Fai grew stronger with each passing day, and was soon able to walk. Kurogane judged that the bandages could come off after a few weeks, and Fai, who seemed to know a good deal about medicine, agreed. He seemed slightly self-conscious for the first day or so after that, having inspected his face solemnly and almost dutifully in a bowl of water, as though it were some kind of ritual. The wound stood out dark and red against Fai's fair foreign skin, and what remained of the eyelid was unpleasantly mangled, doing little to hide the deep puckered pit where the eyeball itself had been. He took to tying a thin piece of cloth over it, though it had not upset his companions at all: Syaoran loved Fai far too much to be distracted by so trivial a detail as a scar, and Kurogane simply did not care.

'You're not travelling in this weather,' he said, when Fai first showed signs of wanting to leave. 'And you're still weak.'

'I'm just fine,' Fai protested, though not with very much vigour. 'I've impinged on your hospitality far too much already.'

'If you collapse and die halfway between here and Kyoto, you'll have wasted my time looking after you,' Kurogane pointed out.

'I won't collapse,' Fai said, and then, 'What's a Kyoto?'

Kurogane looked out at the falling rain, and remembered silver-pale skin in the moonlight; he looked back at Fai, holding his gaze, and saw only light. 'Don't pretend,' he said, roughly. 'You can stay here as long as you need to. Just don't pretend that you're going to leave if you aren't, because I know that you don't want to.'

Fai swallowed audibly. 'Maybe I'm just trying to be well-mannered,' he suggested, giving a huge, teasing smile. 'Manners are another thing you haven't learnt, hmm? You're always so _blunt_.'

'One of us has to be,' Kurogane said.

Soon he was well enough to help with simple chores around the house, like stopping up holes in the walls with clay so that the wind and the wet would not get in, and gathering in the last of the onion crop, and venturing into the forest fringes to find firewood. Several times he went hunting with Kurogane, and proved himself to be, if not a master of the bow, then an extremely gifted amateur.

'Fai-sama can do anything,' Syaoran said, confidently.

'You're not bad yourself when it comes to the bow,' Fai said, patting the boy's shoulder. 'I could teach you, if you like.'

'You know nothing about teaching,' Kurogane snorted. 'You've never studied the bow. It just comes naturally to you, doesn't it?'

Fai seemed to take this as a compliment, and blushed, looking pleased. 'Right, as usual!' he said, beaming. 'But that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing.'

His presence in the house was strange to Kurogane. Syaoran took to him immediately, seeing in him the parent he had sorely missed all these years; but Kurogane was more wary. It was not the fact that he was a foreigner, or even that he was a foreigner who mysteriously knew which streams could provide gold: it was smaller, stranger things that Kurogane was fairly certain only he noticed. Fai's command of the local dialect was flawless and entirely unaccented, and yet he knew almost nothing of local custom. When he walked, his footsteps made no sound. When he stood in the light, his hair shone like a flame. Birds came to his hand when he went into the forest, and sang to him from the hollow of his palms; and when he sang back to them, it was with the voice of the wind.

Kurogane woke early one morning as though called by name, and looked around himself, startled, hand reaching for the small knife at his side. He glanced down at where Fai usually lay, but the room was empty, and the door to the garden pushed back. Feeling suddenly certain that something terrible had happened, he sprang up and strode outside, his breath curling cold in the light of the stars. A thick mist lay over the clearing, so that the trees of the forest had all blurred into dark spindly folds, and frost lay on the grass, glittering. He looked around himself irritably, pushing sleep from his eyes, and was about to turn back inside, when he saw through the gloom a thin white figure standing motionless beneath the trees.

He did not hesitate, but strode towards it. He would have no spirits bringing bad luck to his land. He drew breath to start shouting prayers at it, and then swallowed it again, and stopped. It was Fai. He stood alone in the darkness and naked, one hand laid to his breast, the other lifted up palm-flat to the sky as though making an offering, or perhaps as though expecting a boon; his left eye was open, his right closed by the scar.

His feet were not touching the ground.

'What the hell are you doing?' Kurogane demanded.

Fai jerked violently and spun around, striking out blindly with one hand and catching Kurogane by the throat. His fingers were hard as iron, and as cold. Kurogane swore and grabbed at Fai's arm, trying to thrust him away. Fai blinked, and relaxed his grip, and stepped back.

'You really are far too blunt,' he said, with a laugh. 'You need to learn some tact.'

Kurogane just stared at him, breathing heavily. 'You,' he began, and stopped. He chewed the inside of his lips, and looked away. 'Come back inside,' he said, and, 'It's cold.'

'You know, I've tried so hard, but I cannot seem to feel cold at all,' Fai said. 'Isn't that funny?'

Kurogane touched his elbow. It was solid. It was real. 'You're shivering.'

Fai reached up and gently moved Kurogane's hand away, pressing it between his own and patting it reassuringly. He shook his head, smiled. 'It doesn't bother me.'

Kurogane turned away. The frost burned underfoot. 'Come back inside,' he repeated.

And there were other things.

'Thunder tomorrow,' Fai said, and thunder there was. The two of them stood outside to watch it. The lightning veined the sky and bled out bright; but no rain fell.

'Do you know why it happens?' Fai asked: 'Lightning, I mean?'

And of course Kurogane said _no_, because he was collecting evidence, and so of course Fai told him any number of ridiculous stories involving dragons and bridges and dropped swords and warring gods. Kurogane listened to him and looked at him and did not know what to think. He saw Fai suddenly as falling light, and himself as the following dark, the mountain-shaker, the sky-breaker; and as though catching the thought, Fai lifted his head and fairly smirked at Kurogane, challenging him, and said, '_Now_ we're getting rain.'

And they did, the first drops falling barely a second after he had finished speaking. Fai clapped his hands like a child and sprang up, skipping out into the downpour and raising his face to the sky. Lightning struck over the forest, and thunder boomed out like a god's footstep. Fai spun around in the mud, eyes closed, arms outstretched. Kurogane made a sound of disapproval. Fai looked back at him slyly, teasingly, exhilarated as Kurogane had never before seen him. He made a rude face at Kurogane and cackled when Kurogane scowled.

'Stubborn _and_ boring,' he declared. 'This is what happened first. When the world was made how we know it now, it rained first. Sky loved Earth, but the people who lived in between them, mortals and immortals both, pushed them apart so that life could start properly. That's called balance. Sky and Earth aren't supposed to be together. Things wouldn't work if they were. But Sky sends down Rain sometimes to visit Earth, so that she doesn't get lonely. Rain is very kind. She doesn't mind carrying their messages back and forth.'

'You've got a fever, haven't you?' Kurogane said.

Fai reached out and grabbed his hands and pulled him out under the open sky. They stood there in the muddy grass, close enough to share both breath and warmth, but wholly separate from each other nevertheless: Kurogane with his head bowed and his shoulders lifted, Fai with his face flung back to catch the rain. There was a great longing joy in his expression, and suddenly Kurogane was almost jealous of the rain, of the sky, of everything that Fai loved. He felt an urgent impulse to take hold of him and keep him here, to ground him somehow, anchor him lest he slip away.

Their faces were very close together. Fai's skin glistened. Kurogane looked down at him, at the ragged edge of the scar that showed underneath the eyepatch, at his bloodless lips. His heart beat hard, once, and then began to race. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he wasn't sure of himself.

He lifted up one hand, brought it within a bladesbreadth of Fai's face, stopped. Fai's lips parted with a small sound, and a tremor passed through him. His breath hitched: Kurogane felt it. He swallowed. He turned his face away.

Fai had still not opened his eye.

'Are you testing me?' Kurogane asked.

'I'm testing myself,' Fai whispered. 'When I'm afraid I keep pushing myself – I keep making myself more and more afraid, doing worse and worse things. That way, eventually, there will be nothing that can frighten me anymore.'

Kurogane stared at him for a moment, feeling mistrustful all over again. He stepped back then, trying not to make the action seemed rushed, and folded his arms. He looked at the ground while he spoke, not because he was afraid to meet Fai's gaze, but because he was angry, and because he did not understand his own body anymore.

He said: 'Whatever happened to you, back then –' and by that he meant _whatever you are_ '– has nothing to do with me. Why you're here – that isn't important.'

'I know, I know, silly,' Fai said. He was very good. Kurogane only just caught the hoarseness in his voice. 'It'd be annoying if I died, hmm?'

'You don't understand,' Kurogane said. 'Stop being afraid. That's all.'

And it was more than that. It was his hair in the light. It was his dead-eyed smile. It was the hollow beauty of his face and the needless nameless fear that lay beneath it. His touch pierced Kurogane like lightning.

* * *

With Fai to leave behind at the house, Syaoran could accompany Kurogane on his expeditions into the foothills. It was tough work for a young boy, and meant a great deal of walking on little food, but it was better by far than sitting alone in the dark all day, and to Syaoran, it was proof that he could help. As soon as the dangers of the spring floods had passed, and the weather had begun to warm up properly, Kurogane dug out another kama from somewhere, and bought Syaoran a new pair of sandals.

Syaoran came home with bleeding hands and feet for the first few days, and collapsed almost immediately after swallowing the meals that Fai prepared. But in the mornings he would be up at first light, ready to work again. Kurogane looked at him and saw a wasted life. He blamed himself for it. He could so easily have been apprenticed in any trade he chose, even after they lost their name, even after they were exiled – in another city far away, where no one knew them, where the boy could start over. But they had had not had the money, and now it was almost too late.

He had not yet told Syaoran about the gold.

'If you could – do something else, something other than this,' Kurogane said one afternoon, abruptly. He let his kama fall to his side and frowned down at the ankle-deep water in which they were working. 'Would you want that?'

'You always told me not to think like that,' Syaoran said, peaceably. 'You told me not to daydream.'

'I didn't tell you to give up,' Kurogane almost snapped. 'We could prentice you. Somewhere. Not Kyoto, somewhere else. Or you could buy a farm, get married, start a proper trade. You're not like me. You're not an exile.'

Syaoran looked nothing short of confused. 'We couldn't,' he said: 'we couldn't ever afford that, not even if we sold everything.' He hacked away at the base of a particularly thick cane for a minute, and caught it as it fell, heaving it onto the growing pile on the bank. He added, 'Onii-san, I'm not unhappy here. I don't mind.'

'You should,' Kurogane said.

The blade flashed in the sunlight as it swung. 'Thank you,' said Syaoran. 'For being concerned.'

'I should be concerned, if you're just going to sit around and waste your life,' Kurogane said.

Syaoran looked up at that, his face distraught, but before he could say anything, he stumbled. Kurogane never managed to work out why what happened next happened at all. Perhaps the movement threw him off balance, or perhaps he trod on a sharp stone and stepped back too quickly, or perhaps today was simply ill-starred; whatever the reason, he slipped and swung the blade at the same time, and teetered, and fell over.

Kurogane clicked his tongue in annoyance and went over to help. Syaoran had sat up and was pulling at something urgently. He didn't look up as Kurogane approached, but tried to edge away, throwing himself to the side. Kurogane said, 'What the hell?' because something was wrong but he didn't know what, and the water was turning red, and the kama seemed to be standing upright as though lodged in the riverbed, but Syaoran was gasping now, yanking at the handle with all his might, and the blade was in his foot, and there was blood everywhere –

Kurogane said, 'Hold still,' and then, 'Move your hands,' and then, 'Hold _still_!' He gripped the handle with one hand and the back of the blade with the other as close to the tip as he could, and wrenched it backwards with one short, sharp movement. Syaoran shuddered, but did not cry out. Kurogane threw the kama aside and caught the boy by the shoulders, keeping his other hand clenched fast about the wounded foot. It had been hacked nearly in half.

He made a rough bandage from the sling he used to carry the bamboo and set off down the mountain with Syaoran in his arms. In took nearly an hour to get him home, by which time he was white and half-fainting from blood loss, though he kept very quiet, and never cried out. Fai was in the vegetable patch picking caterpillars off the daikon leaves when they arrived; he straightened up and brushed off his muddy hands, smiling to see them. Then his face fell.

'Give him to me,' he said, hurrying to Kurogane's side. 'I'll take him.'

Kurogane ignored him and strode into the house, where he laid Syaoran down and checked the bandage before straightening up. Fai brushed past him and knelt down at Syaoran's side, first feeling his throat for a heartbeat, then reaching down to examine the wound.

'I'm going for a surgeon,' Kurogane said, opening the chest where they kept their valuables and rummaging around for the lump of gold that he had kept all winter long. 'You stay here.'

'There's no need for that,' Fai said. 'He's alright now.'

Kurogane didn't even listen. 'Try and stop him from bleeding. Don't move him.'

'There's no need,' Fai said again. 'Would you – just come here. Come here and see.'

'See _what_?' Kurogane roared, turning on Fai in his fear and pointing a shaking finger down at Syaoran. 'There's no time for this! He's hurt! If I don't get him help now he'll never –'

'_He's alright_,' Fai repeated, his face strained, his voice nearly breaking. 'Just _look_!'

Breathing hard in horror and confusion, Kurogane looked. He looked at the bandage where it lay gleaming wet and dark as seaweed on the floor: he looked at the blood that covered the foot, at the pale unbroken skin underneath it. He got down on his knees and took up the limb, pressing it all over with gentle fingers. He checked the other foot, just in case he had made a mistake. He picked up the sodden bandage and stared at it. He did not understand what he was seeing.

Fai was saying something, something like, 'He'll be fine, he's fine, he's better now.' Kurogane barely heard him, and went on staring blankly down at his brother. There was a horrible knot inside his chest that would not untie itself. He realised that his hands, besides being bloody, were shaking. He wiped them on his breeches, then set one very firmly on his knee and the other on Syaoran's forehead in order to steady them. The boy's skin was cold and clammy, but his breathing had slowed and evened out. His eyelids were flickering.

Kurogane looked up then, now that he could dare to. Fai met his gaze for an instant, then got up and left the room without a word.

Syaoran stirred.

'Careful,' Kurogane said, getting one hand behind his head and the other on his chest so that he could lower him back down.

'I'm alright,' Syaoran said. His eyes avoided Kurogane's. 'How late is it?'

'Afternoon. There's time for you to rest still.'

Syaoran frowned unhappily, but stayed where he was, obedient to the last. A silence stretched out between them that Kurogane did not like; but the prospect of talking was even more daunting. He scorned the idea of having to force conversation, and would rather have said nothing at all than insult Syaoran with fumbled apologies and senseless platitudes, and yet he knew that he was obliged to speak, to be the one to set a good example and make things right. This past season had seen something happen that had not happened for a very long time: Kurogane had begun to grow unsure of himself. He knew the cause, though he wished he didn't. Ever since his father's death, he had accepted his life for what it was, and had raised his brother to do the same; but now, with his promises of gold and wealth and a good, respectable future, Fai had given him hope, and that had caught him entirely off balance.

'Onii-san,' Syaoran began, breaking into Kurogane's thoughts, 'I didn't mean to disrespect you in any way –'

'Stop that,' Kurogane said, roughly, because that was unfair, and cruel. 'I'm the one who disrespected you. Don't apologise for what isn't your fault.'

Syaoran still hadn't met his eyes. 'Then you mustn't, either,' he said, quietly.

There was silence again in the small room, but this time it was not as pressing. Rather than break it, Kurogane stood up and went over to the edge of the room. He kept a few particularly precious items tucked safely away in the rafters there, including his father's sword; but the bundle that he pulled out now was small and somewhat dusty. Syaoran had been the one to put it there, having washed it and folded it up neatly in kimono-wrapping paper; and the days after Fai's awakening had been so full of confused, anxious energy that Kurogane had barely thought of the bundle at all. Now he understood for the first time what it was. He wondered how long Syaoran had known.

He unwrapped the paper and laid it aside for future use, and then, carrying its contents tucked under one arm, went back to where Syaoran lay. He knelt down at his side, put down the bundle, and took Syaoran's hand. Into it, he placed the small lump of gold from the river. 'I found this,' he said. 'A while ago, in the river. He told me where to look for it, and he said that – there was a lot more, if we wanted it. I didn't trust him. That's why.'

Syaoran looked up into his brother's face, and then down at the bundle. 'Do you trust him now?' he asked, in a rather lonely little voice.

Kurogane said, gruffly, 'I trust you.' He closed Syaoran's fingers around the gold and kept his grip there for a moment. He did not smile, but he felt his face soften somewhat as Syaoran's eyes creased up with pride. He added, 'Just rest for a bit, understand?' Then he got up and went outside, taking the bundle with him.

* * *

Fai was very busy in the vegetable patch when Kurogane found him, and had a small green and black caterpillar pinched between finger and thumb. 'Is he alright?' he asked.

Kurogane nodded.

'I'm glad,' Fai said, looking over to the house with a smile. 'What happened? An accident?'

'He slipped,' Kurogane said, shortly.

Fai searched his face a moment, and then returned his attentions to his caterpillar. 'They're a terribly greedy bunch,' he said, depositing it on the back of one hand and letting it trundle its way up his wrist. 'I keep telling them that we need to eat as well, and that there's plenty of food in the forest. But caterpillars aren't the brightest of beings.'

'You have that in common, then.'

Fai gave a quiet, almost painful laugh. 'I like them,' he said. 'We're very similar creatures, in a mixed-up kind of way. I'm the exact opposite of them, I suppose you could say.' He watched the caterpillar some more, and then turned abruptly, and walked away from the vegetable patch and went and set the little thing down in the long grass nearby.

'They'll only come back if you don't kill them,' Kurogane said, following him slowly. He kept the bundle tucked out of sight in the folds of his tunic. 'It's a waste of everyone's time.'

'They're so small, though. No one mourns small things. That's why I don't like killing them.'

Kurogane stared at his back, his thin shoulders, the nape of his neck, his hair in the sunlight. It was always that hair, always that goddamn hair, always. He said, 'You took away his blisters. After he started going up with me. That's why he never complained. And I didn't notice.'

'Now that I didn't do,' Fai corrected him. 'He wouldn't let me. He said that they'd stay soft if I kept healing them. He wanted them to callous properly.'

Kurogane said, 'Oh.'

'I always thought you knew what I could do, though,' Fai added, conversationally. They were speaking very quietly, even though they stood a full five feet apart, but also with a great, frantic air of calm, as though their lives depended on focussing every their whit of determination into speaking naturally and courteously. 'You knew what I was.'

'I didn't,' said Kurogane, because he hadn't. He had, and he hadn't. He had seen everything, and he had understood it all perfectly well, and yet he had never consciously confronted himself and said _you are living with something that is not human_. He hadn't needed to think about it. It hadn't changed anything, not until his brother's life had suddenly been saved by it. Then it was something he had to understand, for Syaoran's sake. 'It didn't matter.'

'I was only trying to help you,' Fai said, in a sort of rush. He still hadn't turned around, but Kurogane could imagine him hoisting the smile onto his face even when no one else could see it. 'I wanted to make things easier for you. I wanted your brother to have a good life. I wanted you to be content.'

'Who told you I wasn't?' Kurogane asked, in a grim, dangerous voice.

'I don't pity you,' Fai said, in deadly earnest. 'I never have. I pitied myself for not having what you have, for not being strong like you, and generous like you –'

'I don't need flattery.'

'I'm not –'

'I don't need to be _placated_. I don't need your charity and I don't need your gold, and I don't need you trying to fix my life. It's mine, and I live it, and you have no place in changing it.'

'You are a good man!' Fai said. His fists had clenched at his sides. 'When I – when I – I looked down, and I saw you –' His fists started to shake. 'I could see everything and everyone from where I was, from the place where I used to live. I saw none as – as brave as you, as proud-hearted, as good –'

'So you came down here to reward me with money,' Kurogane said.

'That's not how it was!' Fai cried, and spun around.

Kurogane hit him.

'It doesn't hurt you, does it?' he gritted out, breathing hard. 'You can't feel anything, can you? Nothing means anything to you. It's a farce. You came here to play with us, to do good, to be _selfish_ –'

'That's not how it was,' Fai said again. He spoke slowly, and with a good deal of effort. He wiped his lip with his hand, leaving a smear of brown all along the back of his palm; then, in an almost indecently human gesture, one Kurogane had never expected from him, he spat blood out into the grass. For the barest sliver of a second, the exquisite mark he wore at all times had cracked a little, and underneath it had been a human face.

Slowly, his expression shifted from pleading to impassive to patient. He straightened up again, righting himself, settling himself back within his body. Kurogane watched him reassemble himself: it was a full-body process, a complete shift. The mask he wore covered not only his face, but his entire being and nature, his past, everything that he was – and it was not only a covering, but a shield, a shield designed to keep others safe, to keep the evil inside where it belonged. Kurogane saw that suddenly and undeniably, understanding it as clearly as he understood sunlight. He realised: _this is a hunted man_.

'That stings a bit,' Fai added, patting his lip. 'You do have a strong arm!' When Kurogane said nothing, Fai sighed. 'You do know that I am exactly the same as you, don't you?' he asked. 'The same as any other man. Some things have stayed with me, but they are weakening. They will leave me entirely in a few years, and then I will be mortal, just like you are. I will be free to stay here in the Middle Kingdom, and to go wherever I want. I live out the time allotted to me by the Hand that guides mortal lives, and then, when that time is over, I will die.'

'You don't have to tell me this,' Kurogane broke in. He knotted his fingers into the soft fabric he carried inside his tunic. He didn't want to know anymore. He didn't want to care about trivialities. He wanted things to be simple. 'Don't complicate things.'

Fai drew in a breath, opened his mouth to speak, hesitated; his eyes flickered back and forth across Kurogane's face. 'So you don't want to know why I'm here, then?' he said, in a hurry, and then pressed his lips together. His every motion was edgy, and his shoulders were tensed as though for another blow.

'You don't want to say it,' Kurogane replied. 'That much is obvious. So don't.' He clenched his fingers and swallowed, and then did what he knew was right. He said, 'You don't have to die.'

Fai waved the words aside daintily. 'Oh, I've resigned myself to it,' he said. He tried a smile, and pulled it off well. 'In fact, I'm almost looking forward to it. I get the feeling it would make a nice change.'

Kurogane had no words for that. He pressed down the rage that was rising up yet again, and instead pulled out the robe.

Fai broke.

'Oh,' he said, wretchedly: just that small sound into the late afternoon light, while the sound of the bees and the wind in the forest murmured loud all about them. The goats bleated from their pen behind the house; a broom that Syaoran had leaned against the wall slid over and clattered to the ground.

The robe, which felt light and airy as water in Kurogane's grasp, spilled out from his fist and was caught up by the breeze, fluttering out like a long web of cloud stretched colourless against the sky by a cold wind. He did not know how he could ever have made the mistake of thinking it ordinary. It was white as dawn, and it _changed_, tearing apart and flowing back into itself as though it had been woven all out of mist. There were lights in that mist, lights that moved and flared and flickered and died; and there was some pattern worked into it, a complex twining shape like a snake, or a river, or a bird –

'I thought you said you found me with nothing,' Fai said. He did his very best to keep his voice bland, but even he could not conceal the betrayal in his eyes.

'I forgot about it,' Kurogane said, which sounded like a lie, and a weak one, but which was the truth. 'I'm not keeping you here against your will. Go.' Fai wasn't saying anything, so he snapped, roughly, 'You don't have to die!'

'Why did you have to keep it?' Fai cried out, at almost exactly the same time. 'I can't -!' But he caught himself in the nick of time, and subsided, and turned away again. Kurogane only just caught the horror in his expression, the panic, the self-disgust. He took a full ten seconds to master himself, but when he did, his face was once again perfect, his voice clear and his speech refined, his smile beautiful beyond expression. Kurogane felt his heart stutter. 'I know I've been pushing the bounds of hospitality to the very limits,' Fai said, and made a slight bow. 'I will be eternally grateful for your kindness. I fear the only way I can repay it now is by fulfilling a good guest's most important duty – that is, leaving when he should.' His eye creased up a little at the corner, as though with great fondness. 'I will never forget you, my friend.'

Kurogane had had enough. He stepped forward and grabbed Fai's thin arm, pulling him in close enough to whisper; hated the way Fai flinched, the way his whole body jerked instinctively; but did not gentle his grip. 'Stop doing that,' he hissed. 'Stop doing that!'

'You're hurting me,' Fai said, trying to make a joke out of it. 'You win, you win. You're the strongest.'

Kurogane ignored this. 'If you want to leave, then leave,' he said.

He could smell the sweet grey scent of the herbs Fai used on his hair, the smoke of the little fire he cooked over, the wet earth of the garden. His skin was warmer that it had been at the beginning, and his breath on Kurogane's collarbone was heavier, rougher. His arm twisted, strained, then suddenly went limp. As though his back had snapped, he slumped. Kurogane stared very firmly over Fai's shoulder as thin trembling fingers fluttered against his cheek, his jawbone, the corded tendons in his neck, and finally came to rest over his heartbeat. Kurogane held him nowhere but at the wrist: it was not the man he feared to break, but his trust.

'I want,' Fai whispered, and could not go on.

Kurogane turned his face to Fai's hair, breathed in. 'If you want to stay, then stay,' he said.

He half expected that Fai would throw the words from before back at him, would say _I don't want your charity_. But Fai was not spiteful. He only shivered a little as the wind blew again, and breathed out against Kurogane's skin, and pressed himself close for a moment, as though craving warmth. Kurogane's heart, which had been pounding away furiously for at least the past hour, finally, finally slowed. He breathed in deeply once more, his lips on Fai's hair, his fingers on Fai's pulse. He kept his eyes closed dance.

They stayed like that for a little while longer. Then they went inside without a word. Kurogane folded up the robe (badly) and wrapped it up and put it back in the rafters. Fai gave Syaoran a big smile and sat down to discuss the vegetables with him. In a little while, they all had supper.

* * *

Syaoran was alone in the village for only the second or third time in his young life. He had a tiny, tiny lump of gold wrapped up in paper and tucked away safely inside his tunic; his hand kept straying to it nervously, just in case. He had kneaded it out carefully, pounded it flat as best he could with a pestle, and then folded it up again, so that if anyone asked, he could say that it had been stripped from an old gilt comb of their mother's. Fai had said, 'Oh, just have some fun!' and, 'Get some _nice_ cloth this time, won't you?' and 'This sewing business is really quite enjoyable!' Kurogane had said, 'Mind how you go,' and gone back to wrestling with the letter that would, when they had enough gold, help to find Syaoran work as an apprentice. It had been a while since he had had to write anything.

And so Syaoran was feeling so content with the world at large that he walked straight into a servant who was hurrying along in front of his master.

'Hey, brat, mind where you're going!' the man shouted, raising an arm to strike.

His master stopped him. 'Now, now, I'm sure it was just a mistake,' he said, and smiled down at Syaoran, who was flat on his face in the dry dirt, muttering hurried apologies. 'Get up, boy, and let me see your face. That's right. You're the bamboo-cutter's brother, aren't you? You're looking well. Are those new clothes I see on you?'

'Yes, sir,' Syaoran stuttered.

'Don't tell me that brother of yours finally took a wife!' the surgeon said, and laughed loudly. 'I'd like to see the girl desperate enough to take him on.'

'No, sir,' Syaoran said.

'Come into some luck, then, have you? An unexpected windfall, hmm?'

'I – no, I – we – I'm going to be prenticed, soon. In the city, sir.'

But the surgeon wasn't listening. 'I knew he took that foreigner in for a reason,' he said. 'He was rich, after all! Whatever happened to him?'

'Fai-sama is with us still,' Syaoran said. 'He is very well-disposed to us.'

'But what's someone like him doing out here?' the surgeon pressed. 'Is he living with you in that hovel? A man like him? Don't lie to me, boy.'

'It's – it's the truth, sir, he lives with us, and he takes care of us well –' Syaoran faltered. 'If you will excuse me, sir, I must be on my way!' he tried, desperately, and, bowing deeply, ducked out of sight.

The surgeon frowned after him, displeased at such rudeness from a boy he distinctly recalled had been unnervingly bright, and almost insultingly modest about it to boot. He continued on his way, but could not put the matter out of his mind. The foreigner he had treated last autumn had been so strikingly odd-looking that had he not bled like any mortal man, he would almost have believed him to be some kind of fox or ghost. He had been found naked, but the surgeon had assumed that after reuniting with his retinue, he would have paid the bamboo-cutter well for his troubles and been on his way. What the boy had said was clearly a lie, and yet one so outrageous and purposeless that he would have had no call to tell it.

The surgeon decided that he should mention the matter to someone a little higher up the official ladder.


	2. Part Two

**Notes:** As for previous half. Also, erm, I know the ending is inconclusive and abrupt. It was _supposed_ to be inconclusive and abrupt. Only then on rereading it, I realised it didn't fit nicely, so I added on the random coda. Which didn't help, like, at all. So yeah. *is not happy with ending* Again, I didn't do the etiquette and formalities properly, but just pretend, dammit. And I know that 'oni-san' (ogre, geddit?? *is shot*) and 'onii-san' wouldn't really be a feasible pun in Japanese, but I still think it's funny when read by English-speakers, SO.

I did actually do some research for this, by the way, so if anyone is particularly interested in nerding out over Japanese history, PM me and I'll…e-mail you the notes I took down? Whatever. *laughs at self* Writing fic is SERIOUS BUSINESS, woo. Although if anyone does spot any glaring historical errors, please do point them out. I welcome corrections.

* * *

The evenings spent together in the little warm house seemed almost blessed. They were a strange kind of family, sorely lacking in many respects, but more than happy enough in other, more important areas to make up for any shortcomings.

'Welcome home, onii-san!'

'Welcome home, oni-san!'

'What did you just call me?'

'Oh, no! The big bad oni is going to eat me! Save me, Syaoran-kun, save me!'

They had enough food. They had enough firewood. They had good, unimportant conversation. It was enough. It was more than enough.

At night, Syaoran slept screened-off in the warm space in front of the doused fire, for even in summer, the world was chill after dark. In the other half of the house, Fai slept as close to the door as he could, his face lifted even in sleep up to the turning stars, the wind lifting his hair and playing with it as though it were his lover. Kurogane, ever on guard, dozed sitting up. He would fall asleep watching the moonlight slide slowly over Fai's skin, and slip into dreams of light and softness and golden hair that he never quite remembered on waking.

Sometimes they spoke together, late at night: very quietly, and only when they knew that Syaoran was sleeping. Sometimes it was about money, and sometimes about what would happen when they all set off together for the city next spring (which departure date would give them time to get their affairs in order); sometimes it was about old human jokes that Fai had never heard, and sometimes about strange things, about mountains and kings and far-away countries, great rivers and oceans, deserts where horses grew as tall as a house, forests where birds shrunk down as small as a bee: miracles, mysteries.

'I've seen nearly everything,' Fai said once. 'But only from a great distance. _That _was why I came down.'

'Not much to see here,' Kurogane commented. 'Stones. Earth. People. Goats.'

'I like it.'

'It's not much.'

Fai smiled, and it was genuine and sleepy and, with the light of the moon behind it, and the scent of summer drifting in on the breeze, heartwrenching. 'It's everything,' he said. 'To me. This, to me, is the miracle.'

Kurogane had to look away. 'If you say so,' he said. The ache in his chest was so bad that he could barely breathe.

Fai reached out and touched his fingers to Kurogane's cheek, tipping his face up so that their eyes met properly. 'This,' he said. 'Don't you think?'

He shrugged. He shouldn't have to say it. Fai already knew.

* * *

During late summer the days were hot and sticky, and the wind and the dust combined could lead to considerable discomfort.

'No peeking, now!' Fai called from behind the rocks.

Kurogane jumped. He caught sight of wet clothes spread out to dry on a large flat stone nearby, of the old wickerwork basket now laden with bundles of herbs and forest flowers, of bright fluttering hair. 'You haven't drowned yourself yet, then,' he said, loudly, to cover what was not embarrassment at all.

'Not yet,' Fai agreed, shaking out his hair and rubbing it with one wet hand. 'You should come and join me – the water's lovely!'

Kurogane choked.

'Of course, that's not traditional,' Fai continued, blithely, over sounds of splashing water. The back of his head disappeared behind the rocks for a moment, then reappeared, slick now, and darkly gold, curling in tendrils over his shoulders. '_Traditionally_ you're just supposed to spy on me and be entranced by my beauty.'

'Hurry up and get out of there,' Kurogane snapped, edging a little way around the boulders and trying to keep his feet from crunching too loudly in the sand of the riverbank. 'You can't spend all day getting clean.'

'I could, if certain people would stop shouting at me. Oh, I can see you now. Hello! How are you today?'

Kurogane sat down hurriedly in the lee of a tall stone so that he could not see the river at all, and said, 'I'd be better if you behaved yourself for once.'

'Oh, are you coming to guard me?' Fai asked. 'That's very thoughtful of you.'

'I'm making sure your clothes don't blow away,' Kurogane explained.

'That's also very thoughtful of you.' There was a long yawn, a satisfied groan, and the clicking of bones as Fai stretched loudly. 'I think summer's my favourite season. Although I liked it better when it wasn't so hot. Does it always get like this?'

'I suppose.'

'I liked spring, with all the little new baby things, all the trees and the birds and the little mice, you remember? I don't know why you say mice are a nuisance. It was nice then, nice and warm, and it didn't get hot like this. But I like now, too, because the water's not so cold anymore. I'm excited to see the leaves change. There'll be an early autumn this year, I think, but the winter should be quite mild again. I don't feel a good deal of snow waiting for us.'

'That'll be good.'

'You're not a conversationalist at all, are you?'

Kurogane shrugged.

'Oh, well. Could you pass me the basket, please? It's just out of my reach.'

'Don't know what you need all that stuff for, anyway,' Kurogane grumbled, getting up slowly. 'You're worse than a woman.' He took the basket, shoved it down the rock; Fai popped up on the other side and caught it, beaming.

'Thank you!' he said. His wet hair clung to his cheeks, which were flushed and dripping. He wasn't wearing his eyepatch, and the scar was knotted cruelly into his soft skin. Kurogane was pleased to see that it had healed well, and wondered if it still gave Fai pain; but even as he thought this, Fai suddenly became aware as to why Kurogane was staring, and drew back imperceptibly, turning his face away. He did not like to be seen without his patch.

In the awkward silence, Kurogane's gaze followed the line of Fai's throat, down to where the deeper, darker scars twisted over his shoulder and across his stomach. Evenly spaced and running parallel to each other, they could not have been anything but claw-marks, and yet Kurogane knew of no animal that could slice flesh so cleanly. They were still less than a year old, and so stood out pink and raw against Fai's fair skin. Kurogane wanted to reach out to them, to cover them with his own rough-scarred hands, laying his splayed fingers along them and pressing them, hard, so that Fai cried out. He would be so brittle under Kurogane's grasp, his breath heaving hot under the thin skin of his chest, his spindly fingers skittering madly, and because of that, Kurogane needed to keep him close, keep him where nothing else could touch him ever again.

Fai's face was by now a furious red, and his lips were parted. His eyes darted about madly, trying to find a place to rest, he let out a long, shaking breath; and so Kurogane knew that they had been thinking exactly the same thoughts. His stomach tightened, and his heart began to drum quick and hard behind his ribs. 'I'm,' he said, and he was going to finish it with _coming round_, but there was no need. Fai made a small dark sigh of a sound, a mumbled gulp of assent, and Kurogane needed nothing else. He strode around the rock, all his limbs feeling heavy and clumsy, and saw Fai standing there in the water, almost huddled into himself, his arms wrapped tightly around his chest to hide the scars.

- but something on the far bank caught Kurogane's eye, and he looked, and stopped where he stood.

It was just woman from the village carrying a great bundle of laundry. The river was not ride here, which meant that as clearly as Kurogane could see her frightened face, she could see Fai's. Three more women came up behind her, pushing their way through the low undergrowth on the bank, laughing and talking, and then falling silent and coming to a halt one by one as they caught sight of the creature that stood naked in the water.

'Go,' said Kurogane, quietly, before the women could start to scream. Fai darted around the rock and ducked out of sight, but by then they had already seen how half his face was missing, how his eyes shone the colour of the sky. 'Clear off!' Kurogane shouted across at them. 'This is my land, you hear?'

'It isn't!' one of the bolder ones yelled back. 'We know you! You're that exile, aren't you? You got no claim to anything! Don't you think you can boss us around!'

'What was that, then?' another one shouted. 'You answer us! What the hell kind of monster was that?'

'I told you to clear off!' Kurogane roared.

But the damage was done.

'I'm sorry,' Fai said, much later. 'What will they do?'

'Spread stories and get accused of daydreaming,' Kurogane shrugged. 'What do you think they'll do? They're just a bunch of old women.'

* * *

'You still got that thing living with you?' asked the wife of the man Kurogane bought soba from. 'We all heard the stories. My aunt, she saw it. What is it, a ghost? A god?'

'Don't know what you're talking about,' Kurogane said, and glowered at the stall-owner. 'Oi, you, teach your wife to keep her mouth shut.'

'Wish I could,' he muttered back. There was something dark in his eyes as he watched Kurogane.

'I heard tell you had the surgeon in last winter to look at someone,' the woman persisted. 'Is that what it was? What happened to his face, hmm? I heard he's got no face at all, I heard he's so ugly he's worse than a monster to look at.'

'That's all I need,' Kurogane said to the man, and hoisted the sack onto his back. 'Thanks.'

'I heard he's a demon!' the woman yelled after him. He ignored her.

He also ignored the strange feeling he had on the way back that something was watching him.

* * *

Within a month, they had their first visit from the lord's officials. Everything was very formal and polite, with much bowing and roundabout gesticulating. Two men came, accompanied by no fewer than seven servants and pages, one of whom arrived at the house an hour ahead of time and announced his masters' arrival, and told everyone to make ready. By the time the officials arrived, Syaoran had worked himself up into a veritable panic, while Fai tried his very best to calm him down and make him explain again how much he was supposed to speak and when he was supposed to bow. Kurogane sat in the corner as usual and kept an eye on the tea. Something was going to go wrong.

'We are very poor and unworthy, my lords, and have little to offer you,' he said by way of welcome when everyone was properly seated and all the proper introductions had been made, although his tone was slightly too tense to give the effect of true humility. 'That you have graced our miserable home with your esteemed presence is an honour greater than words can express.'

'We're happy to have you here!' Fai added, brightly. Syaoran winced.

But the officials did not take this as a discourtesy, or at least the heavyset, sleepy-eyed one on the left didn't. 'Thank you,' he said. 'The tea's not bad at all.'

His colleague frowned, and elbowed him very, very discreetly. 'We thank you for your hospitality,' he said. 'We are here at the request of our most noble lord –' and here followed a long string of titles and honorifics that eventually culminated in a name – 'and have been instructed to convey his greetings to the esteemed Fai-sama, and to bid him welcome to his humble prefecture. He sends also his apologies for not extending this welcome sooner. He was not informed of Fai-sama's presence until recently.'

'Well, isn't that nice?' Fai said, happily. 'That's very thoughtful of him.'

Kurogane caught Syaoran's frantic eyebrow-waggling and stepped in with a sigh. 'Please convey to your lord our deepest gratitude and respect,' he said, and kicked Fai's ankle as best he could. He bowed his head, and added, 'I humbly beg you to be gracious and excuse any impoliteness on the part of my guest. Being a foreigner, he is as yet unaccustomed to our ways.'

'We don't mind,' said the sleepy-eyed official, and took another deep swig of tea. 'Mm.'

His colleague had started to go red. 'Of course we understand Fai-sama's situation!' he said, loudly, while the servants behind them tittered. 'In fact, it is fortunate that we came! It is obvious that so great and powerful a spirit cannot be expected to spend his time on earth in a mere bamboo-cutter's hut. If Fai-sama would do us the honour of accepting our most noble lord's invitation to his home, we would be extremely honoured to welcome him.'

There was a slight pause, in which only the slurping of tea could be heard. Then Fai said, 'Ah – excuse me, but I think there's been some mistake.'

'No, no mistake, begging your pardon,' said the official.

'I am a mortal,' Fai said. 'I am not – a spirit. I am but a poor traveller from distant lands who was sorely misused by a pack of bandits last winter. This good man and his brother saved my life and took me in.'

The official blinked. He said, 'The man who treated you is a dear and trusted friend of my lord's. He has told us what he knows of you. The villagers are kicking up quite a fuss over you. They think, as peasants will – how simple they can be! – that you are some kind of monster. It would be safer for everyone involved if you were to accompany us.'

'I am not a monster,' Fai said, laughing kindly, as though correcting a child's mistake. 'I am a man, just like you, my lord. You see that I have been wounded – do spirits bleed? Do they come as close to death as I have strayed? I am happy where I am.'

'But we thank you for your generous offer,' Syaoran added quickly.

The sleepy-eyed official held out his cup for more tea, and considered its contents for a moment. 'My lord has visited the imperial court upon occasion,' he said. 'You might get the chance to become very well-known and powerful.' He blew steam from his cup. 'But that's only if you want to. Me, I'd stay right here.'

The other official shot him an exasperated look, and then leaned a little closer to Fai. 'This offer is being made for your protection, my lord,' he said. 'Whether you are a man or not, the villagers mistrust you, and resent your presence. Even if you are only a traveller, you will be welcomed by my lord. Please understand, my friend, that people sometimes take matters into their own hands. If anything goes amiss in the village, you will be blamed. Things can get ugly.' He lifted his face fully then for the first time, so that the three men sitting opposite him could see the discoloration in his left eye, and the faint bubbled scar that crossed the eyelid. 'I know what happens to people who see things other people don't,' he said.

The other man had stopped drinking his tea, and had gone very still.

Fai let out a breath and looked the young official clear in the eye. 'Thank you,' he said. 'From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your concern. But I –' Here he swallowed, and seemed to find his next words difficult to say: 'I want to stay. Here.'

The official looked at him a moment more. Then his face settled into acceptance, and he bowed. 'I can see that I was mistaken,' he said. 'You are clearly a man, and not an immortal. I will make sure that my lord is informed of this, and that the villagers are reassured. But remember that should you ever need assistance, you are always welcome as my personal guest.'

Fai bowed perfectly, and with that, that part of the conversation was over. 'Would you like anything to eat, my lords?' he asked. 'I'm sure it has been a long and exhausting journey.'

'What do you have?' said the one on the left, looking up hopefully.

'Thank you, but we have to get going now!' the other snapped, his politeness slipping momentarily as he glared at his colleague.

They left shortly after that, and Kurogane was glad to see the back of them.

'I think he was a nice boy,' Fai said.

'We don't need their help,' Kurogane replied, stiffly. He had failed to protect his family once before. He would not let that happen again.

Entirely coincidentally, it was at around this point that Kurogane's dreams changed. He no longer saw moonlight. Now he saw blood, and darkness, and things with claws. Their yellow eyes watched him from the shadows.

* * *

Autumn came on early, just as Fai had said it would; but it was colder than he had predicted, with so much rain that reports came in of bridges broken and people forced out of their homes by floods in villages to the south. The days dawned white, spattered at the edges with the red of the changing leaves. Kurogane remembered blood on pale skin, and made sure that Ginryuu was kept sharp. Fai gathered all the fallen leaves he could find and carried them about in his hands as though they were flowers, not minding the little millipedes and spiders that often crawled out from them.

'Don't bring those into my house,' Kurogane snapped at him. 'They're just muddy old leaves.'

Fai threw them up in the air and laughed.

'Now someone's going to have to sweep those up,' Syaoran sighed, not at all crossly.

'I'll do it!' Fai sang, and leapt for the broom. 'I love sweeping things! It's so – ordinary! And cooking, and eating, and sleeping, and cleaning, and sewing, and all of it!'

But then the day came when Syaoran, trying to get into the village, found his path blocked by three boys a good deal older than himself.

'Excuse me,' he said, bowing to them all politely. 'I'd like to get through.'

'Can't go in,' said one.

Syaoran blinked. 'Has something happened in the village?' he asked, nervously. 'Is someone ill?'

'What's happened,' said another, 'is _someone_ decided to take in a demon with no face, and that _someone_ still has the gall to show up here and act like nothing's wrong.'

'I just want to get through,' Syaoran said, keeping his head down. 'I don't want to cause any trouble.'

But they closed in on him anyway, and he couldn't run.

'Are you going to tell your brother about this?' Fai asked him, afterwards, as he gently touched the bruises on the boy's face and smoothed them away.

'He'll only get angry, and that won't help,' Syaoran said. 'I don't mind getting hurt.'

'He would mind very much,' Fai pointed out, putting his thumb on the nasty gash in Syaoran's lip and pushing it closed, then reaching down for the little wet rag and starting to wipe away the blood. 'Or – is that _why_ you don't want to tell him?'

'He – needs to protect me,' Syaoran explained. 'He couldn't – he couldn't save our parents. He killed the man who killed them, the man who set the fire that burned our home down, but that didn't bring them back. So now – he has to protect me, and you as well. We're what he has left.'

His voice was shaking by the time he finished, and Fai distinctly saw the boy's chin tremble after he snapped it shut. He squeezed his shoulder, and said, 'You've been protecting him, too. He's lucky to have a brother like you.' Then he got up and left him alone for a while.

The weather grew steadily colder and colder. The leaves were still on the trees when the first snowfall came, and though it was generally held to have been a freak storm – for afterwards the rains came back almost interrupted for another month – the reason for such a dangerous portent was obvious, at least to the villagers. Kurogane could no longer go into the village without being met with glares, fear, and, in some cases, open hostility. At night he slept only fitfully, for the things with claws were everywhere, and they were coming for him.

It was late at night at when the hailstorm struck. Kurogane was awake instantly, heart pounding in the wake of a nightmare. He was on the point of leaping outdoors when Fai caught him back, saying, 'If one of those hits you on the head, you will die.' Syaoran came running in, lifting a lantern up to the darkness so that they could all watch in horror as the hailstones, each one bigger than a goose-egg, reduced the vegetable patch to shreds in a matter of moments.

'Can't you – stop it?' Kurogane yelled to Fai above the howling of the wind.

'Not against seven of them,' Fai yelled back. 'I'm losing what I had, and they're still strong.'

'Not against seven of _who_?' Kurogane shouted, yanking Syaoran back roughly into shelter as a stone splintered on the ground near his feet.

'You've seen them,' said Fai. 'The other ones like me. They've come to you.'

Syaoran stared, and Kurogane stared with him. Fai just smiled bitterly. The moment was broken by a distressed wail from the goat-pen. Kurogane swore and started out into the night again, but once again Fai held him back.

'The goats,' Kurogane snapped. 'We need them.'

'It'll end in less than a minute,' Fai said, implacably. 'They're under cover, aren't they? They'll be alright.'

Kurogane hesitated, because he didn't want to know the answer, but then asked anyway. 'Are they – going to come after you?' After a beat, he added, irritably, 'Not the damn goats, the – you know.'

'The ones you've been dreaming about?' Fai supplied. 'I don't know. I didn't think they would. It's not like them.'

'The potatoes and the daikon should be alright,' Syaoran put in anxiously, coming up behind them. 'The beans are probably ruined. Oh – I think it's clearing up now. Should we go check the damage?'

'In the morning,' Kurogane said, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck before he could venture out. He was suddenly awfully, dizzyingly aware of the shadows that bristled and jumped all around the house, and of what they could hold. 'You're not going out there now, you hear me? Get some rest.'

'You must too, onii-san,' Syaoran told him. 'Please.'

Kurogane tried to, he really did, but it was difficult. He dreamed of yellow eyes that were not so much yellow as golden, the colour of moonrise, of magic, of falling stars. He dreamed of stars, too, but stars that rode through the sky like warriors, immortal and merciless. They walked the paths of the wind, forged the lightning into spear-blades, watched the world below and took pleasure in wreaking havoc on it. They watched the weak suffer and the strong overreach themselves. They watched as a house burned and everyone inside died, everyone except a young man and his even younger brother: but suddenly it wasn't the old house but the new house, the little house at the edge of the forest, and no one was getting out this time.

He woke, gasping, to Fai's touch on his face, to Fai's voice whispering, 'It's alright, it's alright, shh, I'm here. I'm here now.'

'What?' Kurogane panted, looking around wildly. 'Who – what?'

'It was just a dream,' Fai said, his voice breaking, as though he knew exactly what had been behind Kurogane's eyes. 'It was only a dream. They're gone now.'

Their lips were close enough to touch, and in this dim dreamlike confusion they would have had every excuse to give in, but something felt wrong. Kurogane pushed Fai away roughly, shook his head. 'They're watching,' he said, still only half-awake. 'They're – someone's here – they'll see –' He breathed out, once, twice, closed his eyes in exhaustion, and fell back into sleep.

Fai caught him as he slid down the wall and cradled him close for a moment, weighing him heavy and real and slowburning in his arms. He pushed his face against the hot skin of Kurogane's throat and screwed his eyes tightly shut, imagining a different time, a different story. He did not think of leaving Kurogane, not because he was afraid to, but because he did not know how to change things for himself. He needed other people to force him, and always had. He knew that things would have been better if he had never met the man: but he could not imagine rectifying the situation as it stood. He was frozen where he was, moving no more than a river did: ever flowing, ever the same.

Kurogane twitched in his sleep, and stiffened, and relaxed. The nightmares were beginning again. Fai shifted himself carefully so that he could lay Kurogane's head in his lap, where he stroked the dark hair tenderly, pushing it back from the square stern face, feeling it prickle his palms. Soon Kurogane's eyelids began to flicker, and he jerked restlessly, shuddering. Fai bent lower over him and smoothed the nightmares away as best he could, leaving behind only a nameless, bitter aftertaste of unease. He could do that much for him.

'Stay away from him,' he said aloud to the watchful night. 'He is a good man. Do not punish him for my crime.'

Something quick and flat as lightning sprang up over the forest. It sped across the clouds and was gone.

* * *

As the year turned towards the dark, snow fell thicker than it ever had in living memory. The late harvest had been almost entirely ruined, first by the hail and then by the heavy snows. Stories of dark things spread like fire through the village: things with claws longer than their arms, things with eyes like flame, things so beautiful that you were drawn to them helplessly and were only too glad to let them kiss you sweetly as they broke your chest open and tore out your spine. They followed you like footsteps and lurked at the corners of your eyes.

They had come for the one they had lost.

'Get it out,' said the people. 'If we get it out and make it go away then they will leave us alone. It brought the snow, it brought the bad luck, it brought the other ones with it.'

'It has no face,' said the woman who had seen it first. 'It was scarred, and badly. Didn't they say bandits found it, and tried to kill it? Who's to say we can't finish the job?'

In the darkness and the cold and the hunger and the fear, their thoughts turned to fire.

It happened at dusk.

* * *

Syaoran was outside, shivering to himself and stamping his feet to keep warm as he fed the goats. His fingers were clutched blue around the handle of the pail, and he could see his breath freeze on the evening air. He kept half an eye open for suspicious-looking shadows, although he didn't really believe the stories about monsters, nor did he subscribe to Kurogane's brand of hyperawareness. He was well aware of the danger he and his family were in, and had been ever since he had first taken a close look at the strange cloak his brother had brought home with the strange wounded foreigner he had found in the hills a year and more since; but he was not afraid. He trusted Kurogane, and he trusted Fai, and he trusted himself as well, to a reasonable degree.

Besides, he reasoned, if anything possessed of even half the power Fai still seemed to have even after living a year as a mortal was going to try to kill anyone, it would have no doubt have made itself entirely invisible beforehand, and would do the deed as quickly and quietly as possibly; thus there seemed little point in fear. He thought this way because he was a straightforward, honest boy, and did not yet understand the many varied subtleties of the art of cruelty.

Inside, Fai was taking the burn out of the chilblains on Kurogane's fingers; that is to say, he had finished doing so a while ago, and was now sitting with Kurogane's hand balanced lightly in both of his own, rubbing the fingers to keep them warm. Kurogane was pretending to ignore him, and was doing a bad job of it.

'We should have left as soon as we could,' Fai was saying. 'We shouldn't have waited this long.'

'We'll make it through the winter,' Kurogane said. 'It's not long now. You liked spring, didn't you?'

Fai looked as though he quite wanted to kiss him for that. Instead, he gave Kurogane's hand an almost avuncular parting pat, and stood up to check on supper. He peeked out the door as he did so to check on Syaoran, and frowned. 'Oh, dear,' he said. 'I think he might have slipped.'

'Hmm?' said Kurogane.

'I think Syaoran-kun just fell. Ice is very pretty from a distance, but up close it's awful stuff, isn't it? I'll just go check on him.'

He went out, leaving Kurogane alone. He stood and stoked up the fire as best he could, and debated whether or not he should throw on another log. They were running low on firewood, and he did not like going far from the house, since he was its best garrison; similarly, he did not like sending either Fai or Syaoran out into the forest anymore. He would have to make a quick job of it tomorrow if there was some sun. Fai assured them both constantly that everything was alright, and that they need fear no attack from the supernatural front at least; but Kurogane knew the look that came into his face when he lied. He had wondered more than once if the strange weather and supposed hauntings were not merely a clever trick to turn the villagers against them; and on broaching this theory to Fai, very casually, had realised that he was right.

Above the bubble of the stew and the pop of the dying flames, he thought he heard a faint sound. It was nothing he could name, just a small shimmer of noise, the auditory equivalent of a mirage glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye on a hot day. But the wind was still outside, and in the ringing cold every smallest sound was magnified and given back many times over. He stiffened, hand going instinctively to his hip even now, even years since a scabbard had hung there, and in fact he was on the verge of going to get Ginryuu down when he heard Fai scream, 'Kurogane!'

He did not pause to think. He ran for the sword, pulling it down and slipping the scabbard hastily over his shoulder before throwing himself outside. It was already growing dark, and in the blue twilight he could see nothing but vague half-shapes and shadows, the low glimmer of frost, the mist hanging thick about the trees. The goats were bleating madly, so he strode towards their pen, stumbling in the icy mud. He made out pale hair, and two prone forms on the ground, one still, the other hunched over it; he started towards them, but something sang past his ear, and something else grazed him on the shoulder, and then he was struck with a spatter of small stones, and suddenly they were everywhere –

Fire sprang up in the dark, and the mists parted. A man barrelled through, torch held high in one hand, some kind of crude club in the other. He charged straight for Fai and Syaoran, club raised to strike. Kurogane saw red flame shine on the golden hair, saw his brother's thin form held close and tucked under a protective shoulder, and sprang. He half leapt in front of them, sword drawn and ready, and it was only because the man slipped a little in the slush that Kurogane did not kill him on the spot. As it was, he teetered and veered wildly to the left, and Kurogane's blade caught only the edge of his arm. He howled and fell, panting; the torch fell with him and sputtered out.

But more were on their way. The mist flared red under the eaves of the trees.

'Is he hurt?' Kurogane barked out, turning back to Fai. Syaoran lay unmoving in his arms, his face splattered dark with what could have been mud or blood or both. 'What did they do to him?'

Fai gathered Syaoran closer and tried to stand. Kurogane took his arm and pulled him up, angling his body so that Syaoran was fully protected. 'He's alive,' Fai said, 'he's fine, he's just out of his body for a while – I think a stone hit him and he fell –'

'Get him up into the hills,' Kurogane said. His voice was shaking. 'I'll – I'll hold them off –'

'They won't hurt him unless he's with me,' Fai snapped. 'Take him. I can manage this better than you can.'

The man in the mud laughed and bubbled and said, 'They're coming for all of you filthy bastards. All of you. I wish your souls a quick journey to the otherworld. Be glad to see them go. Make sure you don't hang around, you hear?'

Kurogane kicked him viciously in the stomach. As he did, a second rain of stones fell, and did not stop, clattering down in sporadic bursts. Shouts could be heard now. Kurogane said, 'Just get him the hell out of here and keep him safe,' to Fai and then turned, sword raised.

A thin streak of gold arced through the night above their heads.

Kurogane swore, and roared, 'What are you, cowards? Come here and fight me face-to-face!'

'Please come with us,' Fai begged from behind him. 'He needs you. He'll be safest with you. Please!'

And then, as more arrows began to soar overhead, and as the sodden thatch of the cottage began to smoulder, the first villagers stamped through the fog. There were only four or five at the moment, but they were all big, burly men, and from the clamour growing behind them, nearly half the village was following. 'There!' screamed one. 'They're there! Get them!'

'Kurogane!' Fai hissed.

Kurogane looked back once at Syaoran, sheathed his sword, and ran.

Fai was at his side instantly, moving swiftly and tirelessly, Syaoran held safe in his arms. The roof of the house was blazing properly now, spitting and roaring against the ice. Kurogane kept his head down and tried not to look at it more than he had to, but even so, the brightness spilled into his vision and bleared the night with greens and purples, dizzying him badly. He was aware of Fai slowing at his side, and then of Syaoran being pushed into his arms; and then Fai was not there anymore, and there were people not too far behind him shouting and screaming and stamping the ground, and he could not stop running because he held his brother's life in his hands, could not stop running even when he saw Fai duck into the burning house and disappear –

_- no one had survived the last time, no one except one young man who had been outside and who had raced back in to find his brother. Honour was more important than money, and he had known, he had _known_ that by killing his uncle he would avenge his father's death and cripple his brother's way of life, but he had done it anyway – _

He could not go back this time.

He sprinted for the cover of the forest, forgetting everything he had learned of shadows and claws. People were real, and rocks and fire and clubs were real, and nightmares were not, except that the house burning behind him was a nightmare, and the man burning inside it was a nightmare, and both of those were facts, were real and true and ineluctable, and would not be undone no matter how many times he squeezed his eyes closed and then open again.

He kept running. He stumbled so often that he stopped trying to establish a pace, and scrambled over the snowy dead hillsides as best he could, clutching Syaoran safe in his arms. He had not had time to tie his scabbard on properly, and so Ginryuu thudded and bumped at his side in a very unprofessional fashion. He stayed well away from the river, as it was the clearest way through the forest and, being both shallow and solidly iced over, would serve as a wide, easy road, and would be the first choice of his pursuers.

Whenever he looked over his shoulder he saw eyes blazing pale in the darkness, blearing like the flame from the arrows, thin threads weaving a tight net around him, until at last he knew that there was no escape, and that he had been run down. He did not care. He would stand and he would fight and he would kill them all before they touched his brother, but first he needed level ground, a safe place for Syaoran, somewhere that was at least defensible.

Something touched his arm, and he tore away from it with a muffled grunt. He could not fight while carrying Syaoran, could not even reach around to grab Ginryuu; all he could do was keep running. The touch came again and clutched harder this time, and in a sudden unstoppable rage he bundled Syaoran into the crook of the other arm and flung off his attacker with a furious backhand.

The thing clung to him, wrapping its arms around his hand and hissing, 'It's me! It's me! It's alright!' and Kurogane's knees nearly buckled and he said, 'What?' and then, 'Cutting it close, weren't you?' and Fai said, 'I had to,' but Kurogane didn't care. He fumbled up and found the eyepatch, found the raised edges of the scar poking out from underneath it; cupped Fai's face in his hand there in the dark forest, stood blind and uncomprehending and entirely out of breath.

'We've lost them,' Fai said. 'Is he alright?'

'He's fine. What were you –?' He couldn't finish it.

'I had – to get something.' Fai was trembling under Kurogane's touch, and on realising it, Kurogane whipped his hand away, scooped Syaoran up properly again. 'We should keep going to where we'll be safe. Can you find the place where – where you found me?'

Kurogane was quiet for a long time. 'I have no idea where we are,' he said, stubbornly, when the silence became too oppressive even for him.

Fai made an exasperated sound in his throat, and said, 'Think of it clearly in your mind. Picture it. Picture how you get there. That's it. I can see it.'

'Stay out of my head,' Kurogane muttered. 'That still doesn't help us find it.'

'I can take us there,' he said. 'I can find it now, I think. I wouldn't ask you to come with me, but it's not safe here, not with the other ones walking. I don't want to leave you alone.'

'How is finding some stupid spring going to keep us safe?' Kurogane demanded. 'Hey! I'm not walking out blind into hostile territory if I don't even know why I'm doing it! You tell me, you hear? Just tell me what you want to do!'

Fai said, 'Here, wrap him in this. It'll keep him warm.'

Kurogane nearly shouted, but then he felt a cloak draped over his arm. Wordlessly, he set Syaoran down and bundled him up in it, taking the opportunity to heck him for injuries, and finding nothing worse than a large bump on the back of his head. His hair was sharp with drying blood, but the skin had not broken, or, if it had, it had been healed over skilfully. He stood up again, dread knotted tight in his stomach. He said, 'I don't know why you won't just tell me things.'

'You'll know soon enough,' Fai said. His voice was cold. 'Please hurry.'

The walk was one of the longest of Kurogane's life. Fai seemed to have done his best to lessen the cold, but it was still fierce, especially in the high clear air of the foothills. Fai soon shrugged off the signed woollen mantle he was wearing and wrapped it about Kurogane's shoulders without comment, and then added to it one of his thick, slightly muddy under-tunics. They were all far too small for Kurogane to wear, but they acted as good cloaks. Even so, the cold was merciless. They managed to find their way onto a narrow downtrodden track that was reasonably clear of tree-roots, and that must have been a goat-track in times long past, but other than that the way was difficult, being largely uphill, and full of stones and fallen branches.

The yawning dark rustled and squeaked all about them as the night-things went about their business killing and dying and thieving. Syaoran woke briefly, and they stopped to let him throw up. 'I think I hit my head on a stone,' he mumbled, wiping his mouth. 'I'm sorry – I think I fell -' But then he slumped against Fai and could not be roused again.

'I'll carry him for a little while,' Fai offered, in a tone of great civility, but Kurogane took him and set off without a word.

Kurogane began to long for light even more than for food. The dark hurt his eyes. He heard running water from a ridiculously long way off, and kept expecting to plunge headlong into a stream too frenzied to freeze. It took what felt like over an hour for them to reach the water after first coming within earshot of it, and when they did, Fai put out an arm to hold Kurogane back so that he did not trip. His fingers were cold as death, and made him shudder. They walked along the bank, feet crunching on leafmould and millipedes, Fai leading the way like a star in the dark. The mist had thinned considerably, and from here the small pale stars up above were just visible, though no moon shone. Kurogane wanted very much to ask if Fai had been one of them once, and if they were all men. His throat ached too much to speak. He thought he might have caught a cold.

Things faded into a blur after a while. He was dimly aware of Fai saying, 'Here,' and then of sitting down, finally, on the cloak that Fai spread out for him on a rock. He gathered Syaoran closer and was asleep in an instant, though it was not a pleasant sleep. He woke intermittently to odd sounds and small discomforts, feeling pebbles in his neck and water creeping into his boots. He dreamed that there was a great light, and a noise of falling water hanging golden on the air like dawn; he dreamed that he lay rooted into the ground, held down by tall white trees. Their branches clawed at him, skewering his lungs so that he bled out into the earth. They blossomed red with it.

* * *

He woke fully at last to a grey world wreathed all in mist. Strangely, he felt none the worse for what he remembered as an intensely taxing night: sitting up, he felt as well-rested as though he had just slept long and well in his own home. It was at this point that he remembered that his own home no longer stood, and the dread came back. He felt aimless, at a loose end. He did not know what he was going to do with his life. They could not keep running forever, and they certainly could not go anywhere without money or possessions. he had two dependants and no matter how much strength he might have had, that would not be enough to protect them. He needed other things, simple basic everyday things, in order to keep them safe: food, shelter, clothing. He did not know how he was going to give them those things. He did not know what to do.

He would not have been half as angry had Fai just explained to him what was happening.

He glowered down at Ginryuu, and then checked on Syaoran, who had been asleep next to him, and was wrapped up in Kurogane's cloak. He shook him gently, and was relieved when he blinked and smiled groggily.

'It's cold today, isn't it, onii-san?' he asked.

'Yeah,' Kurogane said, feeling his forehead, then slipping his hand around to check the back of the boy's head. No fever. No wound. He was safe. 'It's still early.'

'I'll get up - I'll get the fire going –'

'That other idiot's already taken care of it,' Kurogane told him. 'You just lie still for a while.'

Syaoran smiled. 'Thank you,' he murmured, and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was asleep again.

Kurogane stroked the boy's hair, just once, and then stood up.

'You want to tell me what the hell this is all about now?' he said.

Fai stood knee-deep in the icy water, bare to the waist, his face turned up to the brightening sky. No birds sang, and no wind blew. It was as though the world were holding its breath.

'I'm going to be leaving you,' he said, slowly, and only slightly unevenly. 'I'm afraid that this little – trip – well, it's over.'

Kurogane was unprepared for that, and even more unprepared for how it made him feel. He got up off the stone, rubbing his face to clear the sleep from it, and tried belatedly to brace himself. He told himself that he had always known that this was going to happen. He told himself that it was the way the world worked. 'It was a trip, was it?' he said from the bank. 'Just some sightseeing?'

'Yes,' said Fai. 'And now it's over. I'm going back home.'

'Back home where they tried to kill you?' Kurogane asked, levelly.

There was a slight pause before Fai answered, 'You don't have to worry about that.'

Kurogane stopped trying to be rational. He strode out into the water and caught Fai roughly by the arm, yanking him around. Fai tried to pull away, cringing like a beaten child, his free hand coming up to cover his scar. Kurogane knocked the hand aside, but did not touch his face. He couldn't bear to, not now. 'You're damn _right_ I don't have to worry about that, because you're not going back there,' he growled. 'They did this to you and you are not going to let them finish it.'

'You don't it was them,' Fai said to his feet. 'It could have happened after I came here. It could have been an animal.'

Kurogane gripped his arm tighter. He hoped it hurt. 'Every time you talk about them you hide – that. You don't even know you do it. You turn your head away, or you fiddle with the patch, or something. I've watched you. I know it was them.'

Fai didn't say anything, but he lifted his head a little so that Kurogane could see the scar properly, even though he kept his eyes downcast; and Kurogane could see the effort it cost him to do so, not because he was vain, or ashamed of having lost what must have been a furious battle, but because he did not like to lay the burden of his pain on anyone else. He did not want Kurogane to have to see his suffering, and to suffer for him in turn. He kept his grief hidden because he thought that he alone was wicked enough to deserve it. It was as though he thought he had to punish himself.

'I don't –' Kurogane began, but Fai was already reaching up, brushing gentle fingers across his face. Kurogane stilled, suddenly breathless. Fai pushed his hair back out of his eyes and stroked the line of his jaw, just briefly, and then laid his hand along Kurogane's forehead, his eyes searching for something.

'Your fever's gone,' he said. 'I'm glad. Last night – you were very strong, to keep going for so long in the cold. I did what I could to make it easier for you while you slept. I think you'll be alright.'

'I could have handled it,' Kurogane muttered.

'You need to be at your best if you're going to look after that brother of yours,' Fai told him.

'You're going to help look after him, too.'

Fai smiled, and let his hand drop rather abruptly. 'I'm afraid that's not going to be possible.'

Kurogane clutched his arm even tighter, shook him roughly, pushed him backwards in frustration. Fai stumbled, caught himself against a boulder, looked up in fear; Kurogane was bearing down on him, face twisted in anger. He caught him by the shoulder and shoved him back against the rock, shouted, 'You are not going to let yourself get killed!'

'It won't be like that!' Fai shouted back at him. 'You don't understand! They attacked me to try and stop me from leaving! They _want_ me back! Why do you think they've been after us all winter? They've been trying to make me come back!'

'How can you trust them? How can you know they won't turn on you?'

'They're my family and I love them!'

His voice echoed on the rocks and the cold water. Someone, a bird began to sing forlornly in the fog. It was joined a moment later by another, and then another. Kurogane glanced up, and saw the sky paling to a clear white above the trees. Dawn was fast on its way. He let his gaze drop, more out of anger than anything else, and felt his fingers dig deeper into Fai's shoulder, almost of their own accord. 'They're your family and they did this to you?' he said.

'What I did to them was far worse,' Fai whispered. 'I chose to abandon them. I betrayed them. I'd wanted to do it for so long, but I hadn't even known that I could – I hadn't dreamed it was possible. It was my brother who found the path, who found this place.' He gestured to the stream. 'The – boundaries, if you like, the walls between the worlds, they're – they're thinner here, in this place, easier to break, though I don't know why. He helped me. He told me it was alright to leave. I didn't even have time to thank him before they found us. He held them off.' His voice caught. 'I don't know what they did to him. I don't even know if he's still alive.'

'Why wouldn't they just let you go?' Kurogane demanded. 'Why couldn't they just – if you wanted to leave, you should've been able to!'

Fai shook his head. 'It doesn't work that way. We are an ancient people, and we share an ancient covenant. Our magic binds us together. Immortality is very dangerous if you have to face it alone, and so we promised that we would always be together, so that we would not have to endure such horror…but I gave up my magic, and I came here. The gold – that was the last of my immortal blood. I didn't – I didn't want it anymore, I didn't want any of that – I just – I only –' He looked up into Kurogane's eyes pleadingly. His hands were on Kurogane's chest, fisted into his tunic; his lips were parted as though to continue speaking, and yet no sound came out. He looked terrified, as though he thought for some reason that Kurogane would hate him if kept talking.

Kurogane understood what Fai wanted him to ask. 'I still think you should just stay here,' he said, trying to sound prickly.

And yet Fai still couldn't seem to say it. He drew in a deep breath, and clung even tighter to Kurogane, his brow furrowing as though he were in pain. 'They've threatened to kill you unless I leave,' he said at last, all in a rush. 'I've called them down. They're coming to take me back at sunrise. That's why I needed my robe.' And then, 'I'm sorry I endangered you. I've destroyed your life. It was selfish.'

He waited here for Kurogane to speak, but Kurogane's face had closed shut like a trap, and his fingers were biting cruelly into Fai's shoulder.

'If I leave,' he continued, frantically, 'the people – I can make it so that they'll forget, so that they'll think I was just a bad dream – if I stay, they'll remember, but if I go – they'll think your house burned down by accident, and they won't hate you so much anymore –'

'Just stop talking,' Kurogane said, quietly. He was shaking.

'- if you go to the samurai lord's home, they'll give you shelter for a while – the boy, the one-eyed boy, he'll remember the truth even if no one else does, and he'll look after you –'

'Why didn't you just tell me they were after me from the start?' Kurogane gritted out.

'I didn't want you to have to worry!' Fai said, wretchedly. 'I thought the others would leave me alone, but they didn't, and it was my mistake, not yours! I didn't want you to get involved!'

Kurogane felt his eyes widen. He let go of Fai's arm in disgust and stepped back. His heart was pounding so hard that it was painful, but it was the sick, twisting helplessness in his gut that was the worst of all. He knew that he was going to be able to stop this from happening. He would fight against it with everything he had if that was what it took, and he would believe with all his might that he would be successful, but some small part of him that understood what inevitability meant understood also that he was not going to be able to save Fai.

He felt useless. He had failed again.

'I'm involved,' he said, bitterly. 'It's too late to change that.'

'I didn't – want to change it,' Fai admitted.

His words were clumsy, and his voice sounded strangled, but Kurogane understood what he meant. It was almost a _thank you_. He didn't like that. _Thank you_ was nearly the same as _goodbye_. He continued to stare down at the water, seeing in the growing light something that glittered between the stones. He ignored it. He didn't want to think of gold now. 'This – has to happen, doesn't it?' he asked, swallowing.

'In retrospect, it was foolish of me to think that – that I could have what I wanted,' Fai agreed. 'At least, not for more than a very short time. And I am grateful even for that. It was much, much more than I deserved.'

Kurogane still did not look up. The ache in his chest sharpened until it was suddenly more than he could stand. He gritted his teeth, tried to keep his face under control. 'What was it that you wanted?' he said, unable to hold the question back anymore, and then breathed out heavily, almost as though in relief, though in fact it was with regret at his own bravery.

The silence that followed was almost offended very, very tense. Kurogane could not look at Fai's face for fear of what he might see. _Don't say it_, he willed him. _Do not say what I would give anything to hear you say_. He heard Fai breathe out shakily, and that was almost worse than hearing him say it, because suddenly Kurogane knew, he _knew_ and he understood and it all made sense, and the truth was so appalling and so horribly, cruelly unfair that he could not deal with it, not now.

Fai said, 'I thought you didn't want to know why I came down here.' It sounded light, as though he were teasing, but it meant _you don't want to hear it_. He said, 'I thought it wasn't any of your business.' _It will only hurt you._

'You don't have to tell me,' Kurogane said, throwing them both a lifeline, because even though he was not a coward, there was no point to this. 'It doesn't matter, after all.'

Perhaps he had said it with too much levity, or perhaps the unspoken code between them failed at that point. Whatever the reason, there was a small pause, and then Fai whispered, 'Don't you know by now?'

A small wind blew through the trees and ruffled the surface of the water. Voice hoarse, Kurogane said, 'I know.'

He turned, and Fai stepped forward, and then they were in each other's arms, and Fai was kissing him full on the mouth.

Kurogane breathed in sharply, as though he had been wounded, and held Fai so close that he feared almost to snap him in half. He felt ribs under his palms, thumbed the thick scars, dug his nails into Fai's back: tried in some way to ground him, to make him real and keep him that way. He was not a spirit, not a dream of a spirit, but a man, and the time he had spent in the world had been real. Fai made a sound like a small creature dying and clung closer to him, pushing his fingers into Kurogane's hair and kissing him hard and desperate. His lips were cold, and he tasted of snow on the wind, and of coming thunder, but also of blood. Kurogane wondered if perhaps he were the dream to Fai, the thing that could never stay, the thing he had convince himself was real. He held him even tighter, and Fai slumped against him, seeming to melt, turning the kiss sweeter and more yearning.

It was all in vain, a last, futile act that would change nothing, that would only make what was to follow seem harder to bear: and yet it was for this that the barrier between worlds had been broken, for this that both of them had fought without even realising what it was: and so however brief it might have been, however ill-advised and illogical it might have seemed to anyone else, it was enough, and more than enough. It was all they could ever have. There was no use in thinking _if things had been different_ or _if we could find a way to run_ or even _if we had known earlier_. This was the time that had been allotted to them, and now it was over.

The kisses slowed and then stopped. They stood there in the water with their foreheads touching, lips ghosting together as each in turn tried to speak and realised that there was nothing that could be said. All around them, the birdsong was growing louder, and the mists were thinning, though the air was still bitterly cold. Kurogane cupped Fai's face in his hands so gently, closed his eyes, pressed their lips together once more. He kept thinking _this is it_, and yet he could not let go. He kissed him again, and stroked his hair and breathed in the scent of him, until at last Fai took his wrists and moved his hands away.

'They're here,' he said, kindly, as though breaking sad news to a very young boy.

He stepped backwards into the light of the rising sun, and his hair shone gold. He looked at Kurogane, and smiled such a smile that Kurogane's heart ached. His lips moved to speak, but there was a great noise of wind and feathers, like huge wings beating and swooping down around them, and Kurogane could not hear his words over the commotion. He flung his arm up over his eyes as the light grew, and stumbled as he reached for Fai. His fingers brushed feathers, and he drew back with a cry of confusion, and sank to his knees in the water. He could not see for the light, and for the pain.

When he came back to himself, Fai was gone.

* * *

That spring, Kurogane and Syaoran left the village by the forest. They travelled to a large city and found a house there. It was small, and not in a particularly good district, but it was comfortable, and exactly what they wanted. Syaoran was apprenticed to a well-known carpenter. Kurogane found work as an instructor of swordsmanship in a nobleman's household. They worked hard and well, and they survived.

One day, Syaoran met a strange girl wandering about in front of their house. She was alone, unaccompanied by any servants, which was strange, because her robes were very fine, finer than any Syaoran had ever seen, and her bearing was that of a rich young woman. Despite the mud of muck of the streets and the heat of the day, she was pristine, untouched by any of the filth of the world. He stood in front of her and stared, his mouth hanging open.

She bowed neatly, and said, 'Fai-sama sends his regards, and hopes you are well.' Then she clapped her hands over her mouth, and squeaked, 'Oh! You're not Kurogane-sama! I'm sorry! Um, um, ignore me! I just – I made a little mistake!'

'He lives here,' Syaoran said, hastily. 'He's my brother – who – who are you? I – I mean, ah – I –' He gave up, and went back to staring. Her eyes were very, very green, and if he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out what seemed to be wings springing from her shoulders. Her hair shone in the light.

'I'm someone who can move a little more freely than Fai-sama can,' she said, and smiled. 'You must be Syaoran-sama! I'm very pleased to meet you! Shake!' She held out her hand, and then bit her lip and blushed as he blinked. 'Sorry, sorry, sorry! You guys don't do that, do you? Oh, he tried to teach me what to say, and I tried so hard to remember, but it's _confusing_ –'

He took her hand anyway and held it tight. He didn't know why he was trembling, or why he could hardly stand to meet her eyes. All he knew was that he had never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. He swallowed, and said, with difficulty, 'Would you like to come inside and meet my brother?'

'Yes, please,' she said. 'Perhaps I could stay for tea?'

And she did.

* * *

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